Lolita Dessert
Lolita fashion is a popular, time-less look that’s gaining popularity all over the world. The extravagant designs and attention to detail easily translates to social media. Lolita fashion transcends gender norms and subcultures making its application to artisan desserts a no brainer.
History of Lolita Fashion
Starting from Japanese street fashion in the 1970s, Lolita is a response to the strict gender norms in Japanese culture that still exist today. The ‘cuteness craze’ known as Kawaii, sparked the Lolita style. Young Japanese girls began styling their hair, make-up, and clothes resembling Victorian Era dolls. Knee length dresses, high socks, heels, and bonnets are all common aspects of the Lolita look and are shared by all types of Lolita.
Today, Lolita has expanded to different genres such as punk and goth. The style continues to allow its participants to challenge the conventional cultural practices by escaping to fantasy. While the Gothic Lolita, punk Lolita, and Victorian Lolita looks are popular, the sweet Lolita has the most potential to be used by dessert chefs.
Sweet Lolita
The sweet Lolita is among the most common looks of the different types of Lolita. The look consists of soft pastel colors, over the top bows, and ruffles. Young women wearing sweet Lolita often depict a child-like innocence that reflects the short comings of the conservative ideals rooted deep in the Japanese family structure.
Lolita Desserts
Sweet Lolita translates perfectly to craft desserts. Many pastries, ice cream, and cakes are already designed using the same style as sweet Lolita. Dessert chefs use decorating techniques that resemble the frills, ruffles, and soft colors associated with sweet Lolita.
Desserts and sweet Lolita don’t just look alike, they both require care and attention to detail to pull off the look. Social media has allowed the Lolita style to go beyond Japanese street culture. Young girls from all over the world are embracing the trend by uploading pictures of themselves on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat building huge followings. Dessert chefs have also flourished in the age of social media for the same reasons. Their work takes an immense amount of thought, time, and taste to attract a large audience.
Lolita Doughnut
Creating the perfect doughnuts takes an experienced dessert chef. Activating the yeast to create the dough to rise can be a barrier of entry to those unfamiliar around the kitchen. However, once the process is mastered, sugary baked desserts can easily be made at home. Below is a list of ingredients needed to make delicious homemade doughnuts.
- Milk
- Yeast
- Sugar
- Eggs
- Butter
- Salt and vanilla extract
- Nutmeg
- Flour
- Soft pastel colored icing
The key to making a doughnut worthy of being considered sweet Lolita is in the design. Obviously, a plain doughnut is not any type of Lolita. Like the young women on the streets of Japan, dressed in over the top pink and white dresses, the pastry must be meticulously decorated.
Using different piping techniques with frosting can open up an array of possibilities. Different tips can create an assortment of looks resembling flowers and other textures. By using soft pastel colored frosting, the dessert chef can easily obtain the Lolita look. Piping can be carefully designed to look like the oversized ruffles sewn into many popular sweet Lolita dresses.
Doughnuts can also be made into different shapes. To achieve the sweet Lolita look, a dessert chef may create a giant pink bow made from their prepared dough. An ambitious baker could also mimic popular sweet Lolita imagery like a stuffed animal or popular cartoon character.
Lolita fashion’s ability to transcend into other subcultures creates an opportunity for bakers looking to gain a following from outside their network. Doughnuts are a perfect canvas for portraying these different trends that have grown out of Lolita streetwear.
Lolita Ice Cream
A childhood isn’t complete without a vast amount of ice cream! Part of the sweet Lolita is the child-like imagery and appearance of innocence. Many Lolitas take photos in their rooms that are decorated in a juvenile manner. While this is a reaction to society’s idea of the stereotypical conservative housewife and not to be taken literally, everlasting youth is a consistent theme throughout Lolita fashion. Ice cream is perhaps the best fitting dessert to assist the childhood fantasy associated with the popular trend.
Compared to doughnuts, making ice cream is fairly simple. Most people use an ice cream maker, but this homemade dessert can also be made with two sealable plastic bags. Here is a list of the ingredients needed to make ice cream at home.
- Half and half
- Granulated sugar
- Pure vanilla extract
- Ice
- Kosher salt
- Lolita inspired toppings
Toppings are the key to creating sweet Lolita ice cream. Fruit and candy toppings that fit into the Lolita fashion trend will compliment pastel colored ice cream.
The common pink and white sweet Lolita dress with ruffles and bows already looks like an ice cream sundae. Adding appropriate ice cream to a Lolita Instagram page is a way to create great content and engagement from followers interested in Lolita and desserts.
Lolita Cake
Cakes are the biggest opportunity for Lolita desserts. Baking cakes is a subculture on its own. There are TV shows, fan pages, blogs and celebrities all devoted solely to baking these delicious desserts.
A simple cake can be created even by an unexperienced dessert chef. The actual cake part of a Lolita cake isn’t what requires creativity. Below are the ingredients for a simple white cake.
- White sugar
- Butter
- Eggs
- Vanilla extract
- Flour
- Milk
- Baking powder
- Icing
- Decorations
Dessert chefs have taken artisan cakes to a level no one could have ever imagined. They have proven that the only limitation is the baker’s creativity. Cakes have been carefully constructed to look like anything from mermaids to replicas of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Spain.
Lolita fashion shares many of these qualities. The attention to detail, creativity, and ability to transcend genres offers dessert chefs an opportunity to expand their audience. Obviously, the sweet Lolita theme would look lovely on a cake. Utilizing the pastel colors, piping techniques, fruit and shapes popular within the subculture as they would on doughnuts and ice cream.
The Lolita’s ability to draw inspiration from other fashion trends is what has helped expand the movement and kept it alive since the 1970s. Aspiring Lolita bakers don’t have to be restricted to the sweet Lolita themes. A Gothic Lolita cake could be a customer favorite, especially to those who don’t enjoy the adolescent aspects of the sweet Lolita.
Marketing Potential of Lolita Desserts
Artisan desserts and the sweet Lolita share many of the same unique characteristics. The visual appeal may be the most exciting aspect when looking at the emergence of the subcultures from a marketing perspective. Each trend thrives in the social media environment and when put together will only see more engagement and followers. The ultimate Lolita dessert experience would be a Lolita themed bakery. This business model could bring in all three desserts, served by dessert chefs in full Lolita costume, in a cutely decorated on-theme bakery.
Lolita desserts offer a huge opportunity especially in our social media engagement driven society. Entrepreneurs could expand into artisan breads, breakfast foods, cocktails and beyond! The Lolita fashion is only set to expand as other parts of the world are just now being turned on to the trend. Utilizing the themes and existing fanbase could be an advantageous experience for an ambitious baker.